Tillerson's icy reception over Syria

10:02pm Apr 12, 2017

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrives in Moscow for a two-day working visit, during which he is expected to meet his Russian counterpart and to hold talks on solving the situation in Syria (Image: US Department of State handout)

Trust has eroded between the US and Russia under President Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin has declared, as Moscow delivered an unusually hostile reception to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a face-off over Syria.

Any hope in Russia the Trump administration would herald less confrontational relations has been dashed after the new US leader fired missiles at Syria to punish Moscow's ally for its suspected use of poison gas.

Just as Tillerson sat down for talks, a senior Russian official assailed the "primitiveness and loutishness" of US rhetoric, part of a volley of statements that appeared timed to maximise the awkwardness of the visit.

"One could say that the level of trust on a working level, especially on the military level, has not improved but has rather deteriorated," Putin said in an interview on Russian television moments after Tillerson sat down with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Putin doubled down on Russia's support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, repeating denials that Assad's government was to blame for last week's attack and adding a new theory it might have been faked by Assad's enemies.

"I won't hide the fact that we have a lot of questions, taking into account the extremely ambiguous and sometimes contradictory ideas which have been expressed in Washington across the whole spectrum of bilateral and multilateral affairs," Lavrov said.

"In general, primitiveness and loutishness are very characteristic of the current rhetoric coming out of Washington. We'll hope that this doesn't become the substance of American policy," Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Russia's state-owned RIA news agency.

Tillerson kept to more calibrated remarks, saying his aim was "to further clarify areas of sharp difference so that we can better understand why these differences exist and what the prospects for narrowing those differences may be".